


god only knows what we'll become

by fireflyslove



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angel Wings, Angry Crowley (Good Omens), Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale loses his name, Fallen Angel Aziraphale (Good Omens), M/M, Protective Crowley (Good Omens), fuck gabriel honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 16:13:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19949110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireflyslove/pseuds/fireflyslove
Summary: It was the sound of an Angel Falling.(Or, the angel once known as Aziraphale Falls, and Crowley deals with the consequences.)





	god only knows what we'll become

**Author's Note:**

> I've made the narrative choice not to refer to Az by name until he chooses one, so there's some Pronoun Fuckery going on here for a while. 
> 
> Title from Don't Let Me Be Lonely-The Band Perry, which is the MOST Crowley song I've ever heard.

Crowley was considering what threat would best make the plants grow when he heard the sound. He hadn’t heard it in more than six thousand years, in fact, since before time had begun, but it was unmistakable. 

It was a grating metal-on-metal sound, a thousand bombs going off, a high pitched keen of the deepest sorrow, and the blood-curdling scream of purest terror.

It was the sound of an Angel Falling. 

Barely a whisper of a thought, and he was at the angel’s side. ( _ Well _ , he supposed in a distant sort of thought,  _ not an angel anymore _ ). He lay on the ground (on earth? Not in Hell. Interesting, but something to consider later.) naked and bare as the day God created him. He was covered in soot and streaked with blood from a thousand tiny cuts. 

His wings were manifested into the mortal plane, what was left of them. The great pinions stretched far to either side of him, tattered remains of feathers in tufts, blood pouring from the skin. It looked like handfuls of feathers had been pulled out before he had Fallen. 

His hair was still smoking, and Crowley blew it out, running a hand through the dirty blond curls. Crowley tugged his coat off, and wrapped it around the fallen angel. His wings vanished as the fabric touched his skin, and in their place were left two gaping wounds that dripped blood. Crowley spared a moment to glare at the sky as he wrapped his arms around his oldest friend and hoisted him up. 

He made a soft noise as Crowley shifted his weight, but still didn’t open his eyes, his entire face a mask of pain. 

Crowley returned to his flat with a thought, and willed the curtains shut. His bedroom moved itself under his feet, and he set his burden down on the bed. Crowley manifested a washcloth and gently went to work, wiping the dried blood off the fallen angel’s body. He flinched and moaned in protest, but said no actual words. 

There was little Crowley could do for the injured wings besides bandage them, celestial and infernal wiles didn’t actually work on their wings. When he was done, he pulled the blanket up over his friend and collapsed into the bed next to him. Crowley didn’t mean to fall asleep, but habits formed over thousands of years tended to stick, and he did. 

When he woke, he found himself looking into unfamiliar eyes in a familiar face. 

“Am I imagining this?” A voice raw from screaming, deeper than he’d ever heard it.

“I’m so sorry,” Crowley said. “You’re not.”

The other closed his eyes against the pain. They were the same color they had always been, a strange blue-brown-green-grey color, but his pupils matched Crowley’s now. 

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“What happened?” Crowley asked. He immediately regretted asking as immeasurable pain flitted over the other’s face. 

“I… don’t remember,” he said. “The last thing I recall was being in the bookshop and then Gabriel appeared, and then everything is just… pain. Oh  _ God  _ it  _ hurts _ .”

Crowley reached forward and pulled him into his arms, allowing the blond head to rest against his shoulder as tears poured down his face. Crowley didn’t have to ask what he meant, Crowley knew all too well what he meant. There was the gaping place inside him where God’s Love had been, where his Grace had been, where his  _ divinity _ had been, and now there was nothing but a yawning emptiness. 

Crowley had learned to ignore it over the centuries, and eventually to fill it up with a different kind of love, love for humanity, love for an angel. And now the angel was in his bed, his wings burned, and Crowley… Crowley was ready to burn down Heaven.

Eventually, after an interminable time, the tears finally stopped, and he pulled away from Crowley.

“It’s all gone,” he said.

“I know,” Crowley replied. “I… Well. That’s neither here nor there.”

“How do you live like this?” he asked. Crowley flinched. Crowley knew he hadn’t meant it in any malicious way, but it hurt nonetheless.

“I’ve found ways to cope,” Crowley said. “It does get easier with time. Besides, don’t you know that demons aren’t supposed to be able to love anyway?”

A sudden thought stopped Crowley in his tracks. Demons, with one exception,  _ didn’t _ love. They couldn’t. And Crowley was a bad demon. So if this being was a demon… it followed that he didn’t love Crowley anymore. 

The other flinched at the word  _ demon _ . “You love, though.”

“I’m a very bad demon,” Crowley replied softly. “Never was good at the big stuff. Something went wrong when I Fell. Didn’t get all the love burned out of me.”

“I… know,” the other said. “I can… could always feel it. It was like being bathed in a warm sea all the time. And now… I.. can’t feel it anymore.”

“I’m so sorry,” Crowley said for what felt like the thousandth time. “I do, you know. Love you.”

“Even now?”

“Always,” Crowley said. 

“I… love you too,” he said. “How can I do that, if I’m a demon?”

“I don’t think you’re a demon,” Crowley replied

“What am I?” he asked. 

“I don’t know,” Crowley said honestly. Crowley knew what the presence of a demon felt like and … this was not it. He didn’t feel like an angel, or a human. He felt unique. 

“ _ Who _ am I?” he asked. 

Angels lost their Name in the Fall. Crowley never talked about who he had been before, it was a time long ago and far away, but this being… had lived the life of the world as an Angel with a Name. An angel’s Name was part of their power, and by the act of stripping it, God pulled part of their divinity away. 

“Whoever you want to be,” Crowley said. 

The other closed his eyes and slumped forward, his head resting on Crowley’s chest. 

“I was already who I wanted to be,” he said so quietly Crowley almost missed it.

-

Time passed, months and seasons, and the fallen angel, now going by Zira, returned to his life. He found that things weren’t that different. He still ran the bookshop, Crowley still dropped by for lunch and dinner and everything else. But in slow moments, or when he glimpsed himself in the mirror, he remembered what had happened, the gaping wound in his soul. His feathers grew back, slowly, a mottled charcoal grey, and he couldn’t bear to look at them. 

Crowley, for his part, put on a brave face, made like everything was fine, but Zira knew it wasn’t. He could still sense Crowley’s feelings, and moreover he could read Crowley’s face. There were times, when Crowley thought he wasn’t listening, that he murmured things he’d never say to Zira’s face. Zira knew he was talking to God, but whether God was listening was a completely different issue. 

Cowley was in pain, not for himself, but for Zira. He knew what Falling felt like, and he knew what it meant. He had once told Zira, when Zira had been Aziraphale, that Falling would be the end of him, he’d be too soft, and Hell would rip him apart. Zira still thought that last was true. He wasn’t a demon, he didn’t know what he was. 

One night, Zira was just taking delivery from the Indian place down the street when Crowley rolled up in the Bentley. He had been hoping Crowley would stop by, and invited him in with a smile and a jerk of his head. Crowley followed him inside, and they took the food to the back. He sat unusually close to Zira, practically in his lap.

“You’re in an unusual mood tonight,” Zira commented wryly. 

“I feel like I’m going out of my skin,” Crowley said. 

“Something  _ they _ asked you to do?” 

“Nah. Haven’t heard from them in years. No, it’s something else.” Crowley’s eyebrows twitched, and he reached up to pluck the glasses off his face. “Quite honestly, it’s you.”

“Me?” 

“It’s been a year, Zira. To the day. And neither of them have come after you. I don’t understand why.”

“I prefer not to think about it,” Zira said.

“I know,” Crowley said. “And that’s not a bad idea.”

“I could distract you if you wanted,” Zira suggested. He might not be a demon, but he had been pretty good at tempting Crowley even when he was an angel. 

A wry smile crossed Crowley’s face. “Distract me from yourself?” 

Zira said nothing, setting the plate aside, and climbing into Crowley’s lap. They didn’t do this often, more now than they had before Zira’s Fall, but it was still unusual. He latched his lips onto Crowley’s, and the demon worked fervently at remapping the inside of Zira’s mouth. 

Fingers wove themselves into Crowley’s hair, tugging gently at it. This pulled a soft moan from Crowley, and Zira chuckled. 

“Like that do you?” 

“‘S not the only thing I like,” Crowley said.

“Oh, I know,” Zira replied. A hand left Crowley’s hair and slithered down his chest, vanishing the clothes as it went. It wrapped around him and gave a pull, timed with an answering one in his hair. 

“Fuck,” Crowley said.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

A blink later and they were horizontal on the suspiciously wide couch, all traces of clothes vanished. Crowley’s hands scrabbled at Zira’s back, carefully avoiding the scars left from the burning of his wings. Zira was kissing his way down Crowley’s bony chest while a hand busied itself between his legs, and Crowley was losing his mind. 

“Zira,” he warned. “If you don’t get in me soon I’m going to do something truly stupid.”

Zira was, quite frankly, interested to find out what that was, but he was also an impatient hedonist. He moved, kissed Crowley on the lips once, and before Crowley had time to register what was happening, Zira’s cock was buried to the hilt inside him.

The sudden intrusion punched the breath out of Crowley, and he dug his fingernails into the skin of Zira’s back.

“ _ Fuck _ ” he repeated breathlessly. 

Zira responded with a snap of his hips, and Crowley lost all sense of cohesion and time. The world narrowed down to the two of them, together on the couch, the soft lamp light giving Zira a false angelic glow. 

Crowley’s orgasm came as a surprise to him, but not to Zira, apparently, who smirked the entire way through it. He followed a few moments later, his teeth buried in Crowley’s shoulder. Zira collapsed on Crowley’s chest, and Crowley’s hands roved over his back still, tracing nonsense patterns.

Neither of them was particularly inclined to move and, after vanishing the sticky evidence and summoning a blanket, Crowley found himself with a sleeping fallen angel on his chest. Zira didn’t sleep often, but when he did, it was almost always with Crowley within arm’s reach. He wasn’t needing to sleep himself right now, so he just enjoyed the warmth and the closeness, burying his nose in Zira’s curls. Hours passed, and thoughts flowed in and out of Crowley’s head without him really stopping to interrogate them. 

Suddenly, the smell vanished, the weight vanished, and Crowley found himself Elsewhere. That is to say, he found himself in his true form, suspended somewhere in space. The human body he had inhabited for over 6000 years was vanished, and he existed amongst the stars. Wheels and thousand-eyed wings, a body the size of a planet. His Aspects flickered in and out of his core, a snake and a cat and a crow and a dozen others without names in the tongues of humans. 

But he paled in comparison to the Being before him. This, he knew was God. And Crowley was Angry. 

**_CROWLEY_** God said.  **_WHY DO YOU TROUBLE ME?_ **

_ I’m sorry? _ Crowley replied. 

**_I HAVE LEFT THE AFFAIRS OF EARTH TO MY SON, TO HEAVEN AND HELL. I AM NOT TO BE TROUBLED WITH THESE MATTERS_ ** , God said. 

_ You are not to be troubled with the affairs of mortals and yet you cast down Angels?  _ Crowley spat. He was far beyond being afraid of Them.

**_I DWELL FAR FROM EARTH, I HAVE NEW CHILDREN WHO REQUIRE MY CARE. _ ** God said.  **_WAIT, DID YOU SAY CAST DOWN ANGELS?_ **

_ Even your most faithful servant, who wants to protect humanity at the cost of his own life? Cast down and he doesn’t even know why.  _ Crowley said. 

**_THIS IS NOT IN THE PLAN, NONE WERE TO BE CAST OUT AFTER TIME BEGAN. THIS IS… WRONG._ ** God said.  **_WHO IS THE ANGEL?_ **

_ He was once known as Aziraphale, _ Crowley said. 

**_GUARDIAN OF THE EASTERN GATE_ ** **, ** God said.  **_YES, I KNOW WHY THIS TROUBLES YOU. _ ** They paused, their Gaze turning from Crowley to elsewhere. Crowley heard a low rumble, and an answering high screech. He didn’t understand the words anymore, but recognized the sounds of angelic speech. God turned their attention back to Crowley.  **_I T SEEMS THAT GABRIEL HAS INTERVENED WHERE HE WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO. NONE BUT ME ARE ABLE TO DICTATE THE FATE OF A CELESTIAL BEING. YOU WILL TURN BACK TIME, CROWLEY. WHAT HAS BEEN DONE WILL BE UNDONE, AND THE ANGEL AZIRAPHALE WILL EXIST ANEW. NONE BUT YOU AND GABRIEL WILL REMEMBER THIS. YOU BECAUSE YOU MUST, AND GABRIEL BECAUSE, WELL, HE WILL KNOW MY WRATH SHOULD MY WILL EVER BE CROSSED LIKE THIS AGAIN. _ **

_ I’m going to what?  _ Crowley asked, but it was too late, his wheels were spinning, six axes of wild turns, and he could feel the days slipping backward.

-

Crowley was considering what threat would best make the plants grow when he heard the sound.

The doorbell, an annoying invention that had to have been heaven’s doing.

“Door’s open, angel,” Crowley said. 

His heart skipped a beat when Aziraphale entered his solarium, carrying a basket over his arm. The angel, for that’s what he was, was whole again. Crowley longed to see his wings, but that could come later. For now, he pushed a wave of love at Aziraphale, just to see the smile on his face. 

“And I you,” Azirapahale said. 

“Forever,” Crowley said, perhaps more strongly than he had meant to.

“Crowley, is something wrong?” Aziraphale asked. 

“No,” Crowley said, pushing the image of Zira, naked and bleeding in the dirt, out of his head, and instead replacing it with what he saw before him. Aziraphale, whole and hale, in the late afternoon sunlight pouring in the windows, his hair limned gold, almost like a visible halo. “No, everything’s right.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I can be found anywhere an angel falls @fireflyslove


End file.
